How to make an mpeg smaller?

[dalecooper]

Hi, newbie question: how can I shrink an mpeg file I have? I started with various mpegs ripped from a DVD. I assembled them in Womble's MPEG Video Wizard and made one big mpeg (about 1 hr 45 min, a bit under 5 gig). This file is too large to go on one DVD-R. I need to make it smaller but ideally without reencoding. Or if reencoding is necessary, what program will do it well & do it fast? because Ulead Movie Factory does neither (it was slow and came out badly) and MPEG Video Wizard is taking hours and hours to process it.

I have seen recommendations to use DVD Shrink for similar tasks. My question is, all of those recommendations seem to focus on reauthoring from what I assume are just vobs ripped right off an existing DVD. In this case I've got one big mpeg, not a series of vobs; I want to do my actual authoring in Ulead, which would work just fine (I think) if the mpeg were just smaller. Any help would be appreciated.

[dalecooper]

Goddangit, there are too many forums here. I think I'm on the wrong one again. I'll take this elsewhere, sorry